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Sunday, April 29, 2018

The Northern Quebec Shortwave Service from RCI Shortwave in Sackville

RCI Sackville (Wikipedia)

It
was in the Summer of the year 1923 that the Westinghouse radio complex in
Pittsburgh Pennsylvania launched its earliest programming that was beamed on
shortwave to the frigid areas of the far north in Canada.This early programming grew into what became
the KDKA-8XS Far Northern Service, and it was on the air from 1923 - 1940, a
total of 18 years.

Out of the KDKA-8XS Far Northern Service
grew the equally famous Canadian Northern Messenger Service, a program that was
originally produced by CRBC, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission, in its
Toronto studios at mediumwave CRCT in 1933.This radio program,the Canadian
Northern Messenger, was taken over by CBC the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
nearly four years later towards the end of the year 1936.

However, radio coverage of the far northern
areas of Arctic Canada grew from this single weekly program on mediumwave and
shortwave into a multi-station network of programming services, again on
mediumwave and shortwave.Here’s Ray Robinson with what happened.

Back
in 1938, CBC established a 50 kW mediumwave station, CBA, on the edge of the
huge Tantramar Marshes near Sackville in the province of New Brunswick.The Tantramar Marshes, one of the largest
tidal salt water marshes in the world, cover an area of nearly 80 square
miles.They are located on the edge of
the Bay of Fundy, which claims the highest tidal movement in the world, a rise
and fall of 55 feet twice each day.The
maximum tidal rise there of 71 feet occurred in 1869.

At
the same location, they later installed an RCA 50 kW shortwave unit, and the
first test broadcast on shortwave took place on December 16, 1944.A few days later, on Christmas Day, CBC made
a special broadcast for the benefit of Canadian personnel on duty in Great
Britain and continental Europe.A second
shortwave transmitter was then added, and a regular daily international
shortwave service via the two RCA 50 kW transmitters began exactly two months
later, on February 25, 1945.

A
year or two later again, CBC began special programming that was beamed to the
frozen north, and the two shortwave transmitters carried the same programming
in parallel on 6090 and 9620 kHz.At
this stage, the northern programming was presented under the title CBC North
West & Arctic Settlements.During
the winter, the Northern Messenger program was included in this shortwave
scheduling.

In
1958, the CBC announced plans to install a 50 kW shortwave transmitter in
Vancouver, British Colombia, for coverage into the western areas of the
Canadian Arctic, that is the Yukon and the North West Territories.However, that project was never implemented,
and instead the CBC augmented its daily Northern Service on shortwave from RCI
Sackville and gave it a new name, The CBC Northern Canada Service.

At
this stage, the CBC also took over a small community medium wave station in
Yellowknife, station CFYK on 1450 kHz, which had been established by the Royal
Canadian Signal Corps in 1948.

Nearly
40 years later, the Northern Canada Service became the Northern Quebec
Shortwave Service, though it was still on the air from the same transmitter
site at Sackville.However, over the
intervening years, the older 50 kW transmitters (by this time now three RCA
units on air) were retired in favor of newer transmitters rated at 100 kW and
ultimately 250 kW.

In
the 1960’s, a total of eight northern medium wave transmitters were carrying a
relay of the CBC northern service, generally as an off-air relay from shortwave
RCI Sackville.In 1968, the CBA
mediumwave transmitter and one 460 foot high antenna tower were removed from
the Sackville shortwave station and re-installed near Moncton, New Brunswick,
on Dover Road at Fox Creek.

During
the 1970’s, the specialized program service, the Northern Messenger, was phased
out as no longer being necessary, due to other more modern forms of
communication, though the Northern Quebec Shortwave Service itself continued as
usual.

The
international shortwave service from CBC-RCI Sackville, with its official
callsign CKCX, ended on June 23, 2012; though the Northern Quebec Shortwave Service
was continued for several more months, coming to a final end on November 30 in
the same year 2012.The northern
Canadian programming was now available via satellite, and a total of five new
low power FM relay transmitters took over this programming for the benefit of
small local communities.

For
much of the lifetime of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s northern
programming, CBC issued a special QSL card for the verification of their
shortwave programming from Sackville.At
least half a dozen of these very attractive QSL cards are known over the years.

Interestingly,
after the CBC-RCI shortwave station at Sackville was closed, the entire
property was sold off.In February 2017,
a First Nations group, MTI, bought the entire property, including the 2½ storey
building with its bevy of transmitters and additional electronic equipment.

Included
in the sale, was the on-site original RCA transmitter from 1944, Model MI733A,
no longer in working condition, but preserved as a museum piece.In an endeavor to save this historic
transmitter from destruction and sale as metallic scrap, MTI offered it to any
interested buyers for $5,000.

And
just a couple of months ago, in February this year, William Steele purchased
the historic old unit and announced plans to install it as a museum piece in an
old and equally historic prison that he procured a few years ago.The prison is located in nearby Dorchester,
New Brunswick.The building is now in
use as a guest house, and the old transmitter will occupy pride of place in a
former prisoner cell.